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by impendingchange 299 days ago
And what makes this project significant is there's a lack of VB.NET tools on Linux.

It has been challenging trying to get Gtk 3 widgets to play nice. Finally just rolled my own custom-drawn editor, treeview, and listbox. Going to release them later in a library.
2 comments
dadoum 299 days ago
Wait, you're not using GtkSourceView? Cool

You could also have used Mono.TextEditor btw. I personally find it better than GtkSourceView, and for having ported it to GTK# 3 myself, it was rather straightforward to port.

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impendingchange 298 days ago
I actually had Claude do a lot of research into libraries. We tried a LOT of them before finding Gtk# 3 stable enough on the version used. What also was a factor was finding a version of dotnet on Linux that was stable for this combination. And it wasn't so much what would compile together, it was more what packages were available for MX Linux (my preferred flavor).

Gtk 3 has a weird way of doing scrolled controls that I couldn't accept because the nesting caused all kinds if issues. Also, the Gtk text control is incredibly slow when the file in it grows past 600 lines.

I wrote the editor control with an architectural design I created originally back in 2004, and subsequently lost. Much, much faster implementation. Took about 3 weeks with Claude.

Also wrote a treeview, listbox, colorpicker. Those took a day or two each with Claude. I will be releasing those controls in a dotnet library when I am finished with SimpleIDE.

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tombert 299 days ago
This isn't meant to be a passive aggressive dig, but a genuine question...why make an VB.NET IDE?

I think it's cool that you did it, it's just not a language that I've seen get a lot of love.

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impendingchange 299 days ago
VB.NET's verbose syntax actually makes it PERFECT for AI assistance. And it is being developed with full AI integration.

And, Linux lacks any such tools. Not even VS Code has a plugin for VB.

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tombert 298 days ago
I didn’t realize that VS Code didn’t have any VB support.

I think it’s cool you built this. While I don’t think I will personally use this as all I do is more infrastructure stuff now, this still seems like a pretty project and I wish you all the best.

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